April 9, 2012 – When you ask a 4-year-old, “What do big fish eat?,” the answer comes easily, “Little fish!”
A new report by the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force entitled Little Fish, Big Impact confirms the wisdom of the 4-year-old — big fish do eat little fish.
Why is this finding significant?
Little fish (forage fish) play an essential role in the marine food web.
t works like this: plankton absorb the sun’s energy, then species like sardines, anchovies, menhaden and herring eat the plankton. Later, whales, seabirds and larger fish such as salmon, cod and striped bass come along and eat the forage fish, transforming the energy produced by plankton into the bodies of those larger creatures.
The problem is that over the last 100 years the industrial fishing fleet has become very good at strip-mining the ocean of forage fish. Today, only a small percentage of forage fish end up in cans for human consumption. Most are ground up into meal for fish farms and chicken farms, used as bait for other fisheries, or turned into nutritional supplements like fish oil.
Populations of forage fish can vary dramatically depending on ocean conditions. But one thing is certain: overfished forage fish can be wiped out, and the species that depend on them can go hungry.
The good news is that when harvests are reduced, forage fish species can rebound to healthy and sustainable populations. This protects the entire ocean food web.
Read the full article at Earth Justice.
Analysis: Earth Justice’s main claim is that “when harvests are reduced, forage fish species can rebound to healthy and sustainable populations.” Among the forage fish included in this statement is menhaden, which is primarily fished in and around the Chesapeake Bay. But much of the available data from the menhaden fishery does not support the claim that a decreased commercial catch would automatically lead to population growth.
It is more likely that environmental factors, rather than commercial fishing, is the primary influence on the size of the menhaden stock. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) reached this conclusion in their 2010 stock assessment. They write that “non-fishery sources” are the main causes of fluctuations in the menhaden population. They also note that, over the history of the fishery, the number of fish removed by the commercial harvest seems to have little influence over how many menhaden subsequently spawn.